[texworks] Wishlist for TeXworks 0.4.3+

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2012-01-20 at 12:18:11 +1300, Paul A Norman wrote:

 > Under Windows there is a standard api (GetTextmetrics
 > GetTextExtent32 etc and newer) for calculating the fonted effect of
 > a portion of plain ASCII 

Doesn't Qt provide a system independent layer of abstraction for these
things?  Isn't there something like the the PostScript operator
stringwidth, which takes font metrics into account?  I would be amazed
if not.

 > --- however this would not take into account any of the LaTeX
 > packages that you were using or other effects, and would rely on
 > .ttf or .otf (and perhaps .ps) fonts only.

I don't see any relationship to LaTeX packages.  Of course, when
talking about line breaking in text editors, it's essential to
distinguish between ordinary text and computer code.  Not everybody is
using LaTeX, but I think that it's sufficient to provide a primitive
which protects a particular line from being broken automatically.  In
order to determine where (at which line number) a verbatim section
begins or ends, it's best to consult a script.  This way it's possible
to support other formats than LaTeX too.  And if LaTeX macro packages
provide verbatim-like environments which do not start with
\begin{verbatim}, it's easy enough to adapt the script by adding a
dedicated regular expression.

As far as non-(Type1|TTF|OTF) fonts are concerned, the only format
used in the TeX world is what Metafont creates.  However, these bitmap
fonts are usually not accessible by anything else but TeX itself.
IMO it's not worth thinking about them, nowadays nobody wants to use
fonts anymore where glyphs consist of toy building bricks.
Fortunately, almost(?) all these fonts are available as Type1.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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